Showing posts with label A Yank At Oxford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A Yank At Oxford. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Little Miss Echo

Must She Always Be Little Miss Echo?
by Hubert Cole, originally published in 1940

I doubt that anybody would deny that the biggest screen role-- of the past ten years has been that of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. It would be strange wouldn’t it, if the girl who eventually got the role after so much heated competition, should eventually be killed by it?


That, I believe, is just what is happening. Miss Leigh, having scored one success with Scarlett, is going to echo and re-echo the role down the ages until everybody is thoroughly sick and tired of it. Unless something is done to stop it.

I am not blaming David O. Selznick, who cast Miss Leigh as Scarlett. The rot had set in some time before that. You can trace the Scarlett character back to A Yank at Oxford. That was the time when Vivien, having played two or three colourless ingénues in quota quickies, and then having been signed up by Alexander Korda with a fanfare of windy trumpets to play another colourless role in Fire Over England, first appeared as an unprincipled hussy.

She was, if you remember, the flirtatious wife of the elderly bookseller. She had so many affairs with the local undergraduates that her long-suffering husband at last decided to move his business. But, as she triumphantly announced, they were only moving to Aldershot. It was a very nice and naughty performance, that one in A Yank at Oxford. Her wide and innocent blue eyes contrasted attractively with her less innocent behaviour. She was a kitten with fully grown claws.

On the strength of that performance she was chosen to play the ambitious Cockney girl in Sidewalks of London. (It’s funny how blurbs of publicity follow Miss Leigh around-- as in the later Gone With the Wind campaign, there was a great deal of hullabaloo about finding an entirely new discovery, which ended up with Vivien Leigh getting the part.)

The girl in Sidewalks of London was as determined and unscrupulous as the bookseller’s wife in A Yank At Oxford. She was a little more open about it. She was at less pains to hide the fact that she would ride rough-shod over any obstacles, any ordinary feelings of kindness or gratitude.

And so we come to Scarlett O’Hara. Scarlett belongs to the select few heroines in literature who are intensely interesting and intensely unsympathetic. She is an American Becky Sharp.

She has ambition without principles, strength of purpose without conscience. She was a greater, more detailed study of the girl that Vivien Leigh had already played in A Yank at Oxford and Sidewalks of London. It was as if those two previous roles had been nothing more than a preliminary tryout for the final one.

If, indeed, they had been that --and if the course of training had ended there-- all would have been well. A monster production like Gone With the Wind might conceivably call for two test pictures to give the leading lady practice. But the three pictures together, and the triumph that Vivien scored in the third, seem to be her undoing. She is typed as the tough girl; the outward seeming sweet young thing with the callous core.

That, I am convinced, is why she was cast opposite Robert Taylor in Waterloo Bridge. Somebody, looking round for a subject for Vivien’s next picture, said: “Heck, why not Waterloo Bridge? That was all about a prostitute, wasn’t it?”

And Vivien, who is allowed to have no moral scruples on the screen, was given the part. As it happens, the girl in the story isn’t primarily a prostitute-- and is even less of one than she was in the earlier version, made before the purity campaigners got such a firm hold on Hollywood.

Actually, Myra in Waterloo Bridge is a very charming young woman, though an extremely foolish one. She becomes a prostitute not through willfulness or lack of moral sense, but because she is rather stupid.

That role might have been the opportunity that Miss Leigh was waiting for. It might have been the lucky accident that would have formed a stepping stone from the past series of unsympathetic roles to a new future of more pleasant ones. It might have removed the threat that she is condemned to play Little Miss Echo for the rest of her screen career.

But I’m afraid it hasn’t. Here she is now, off again down the path of mottled morals, playing Lady Hamilton to Laurence Olivier’s Nelson in the new film Alexander Korda is producing in Hollywood.

I’m not quite sure why Korda should be making the film at this time. There is obvious publicity value in the teaming of Olivier and Vivien; there is obvious topical value in the story of a great British admiral; but there is also the strange emphasis (as far as one can judge from the advance pictures) on the intrigue with Lady Hamilton and Nelson’s strange conduct in Naples-- a very unsavoury phase of his career.


And I suspect that the primary reason why he chose the subject was that Miss Leigh is still under contract to him and he thought Lady Hamilton a sufficiently immoral character to suit Miss Leigh’s style. For Korda, like the rest of the producers, apparently now believes that Miss Leigh has only one style.

Perhaps he is right. He should know more about her work than I do. But Waterloo Bridge, at any rate, seems to suggest she can play a young woman of good impulses and healthy outlook as well as she can the other kind. It may not be entirely the fault of the producers and casting managers that Miss Leigh has travelled so far away from the sweet young thing that she used to be in her early stage and screen days.

Two years ago, for instance, she said in an interview: “Quite a number of people were surprised when I appeared as a vamp in A Yank at Oxford, and took an unsympathetic part in Sidewalks of London. But in both cases, I felt that the roles were interesting and out of the rut. Since the films have been completed and shown, the letters I have received have proved I was right. Most of these letters say how glad the writers are that I have not confined myself to pretty heroine characters.”

To that insignificant statement you can add the story, recently published, that long before Gone With the Wind was ever made-- and certainly long before Vivien was approached to play the principle role-- she gave a copy of the book to a friend and autographed it from Scarlett.

In itself, the incident means little, except that Vivien not unnaturally saw herself in a role which was bound to be one of the most important on the screen. But set beside what she said in the interview, it seems to point clearly to the fact that she herself had a preference for unsympathetic roles-- and believes that the film going public likes best to see her in such roles. I believe she has been misled-- both by herself and her correspondents.

There is no doubt she takes her career seriously and laudably aims at becoming a great actress. It is true that many great actresses have played unsympathetic parts and created great reputations in them. It is also significant that, in one of her earliest and worst films, The Village Squire, she played Lady Macbeth.

All the way through, perhaps by chance and perhaps by choice, she has veered toward near villainy, she has appeared as a cold and calculating hussy.

There have been patches when she was just a normal, nice young woman-- but she does not seem to have been particularly interested in those roles. Unfortunately, she has some reason to despise them, for they were parts of no great value: the lady-in-waiting in Fire Over England, for instance, and the heroine in Dark Journey-- though the film itself was pleasant enough.

So, by avoiding being “confined entirely to pretty heroine characters,” she seems to have dug herself into an equally treacherous rut. If I have accused her wrongly of willfully going unsympathetic on us, I am sorry. If, in fact, she is fighting against such typing, I am doubly sorry-- that she has had so little success recently.

There is a great deal of danger in stereotyping her in unpleasant parts. It is difficult-- probably impossible-- for a young actress to become great if she confines herself to unsympathetic roles. Unless Vivien Leigh breaks clean away from Scarlett O’Hara and all the other minor Scarletts, I fear she is going to find herself in the middle of a lot of grief.







Friday, November 27, 2015

Fashion Friday #5: A Yank At Oxford

In 1938, Vivien Leigh co-starred in A Yank At Oxford with Robert Taylor and Maureen O'Sullivan. Vivien, as the second female lead, played the very flirtatious wife of the local (and older than her) book-seller at Oxford.

As Elsa Craddock, Vivien stirs things up for the local collegians, which includes Robert Taylor's character, Lee Sheridan. Lee is a brash, cocky, young American who triumphs sportswise over the other young men at Oxford. Maureen O'Sullivan plays Molly Beaumont, Robert Taylor's love interest and sister of his athletic rival.


The clothes for A Yank At Oxford were created by Swiss designer, Rene Hubert. Ultimately, Rene would work as costume designer on four of Vivien's movies, Fire Over England, Dark Journey, Yank and That Hamilton Woman.

Hubert designed costumes for well over a hundred movies during his long career and received two Oscar nominations for his work. His first nomination was in 1954 for Desiree (color) and his second came ten years later in 1964 for The Visit (black & white). In addition to movies, Mr. Hubert also designed stage sets and costumes for plays and revues.


The first outfit we'll look at today is this lovely three-piece, plaid ensemble. The jacket is made from black tweed, while the lapels and pockets are trimmed in a black and yellow plaid design. The skirt is also made from tweed, with the same plaid pattern as the jacket's trimmings, in black and yellow. Even the gloves didn't escape Rene's attention with their plaid undersides.


One of the perks of playing 'the other woman,' in a movie from the 1930s, is that the actress usually gets to wear flashier clothes than the film's good girl. We can see that's the case with Vivien's character, Elsa, in her fur-trimmed ensemble, pictured below.


Vivien wears a smart, green, wool outfit that coordinates perfectly with her gloves and chin-strapped hat . The dress features ocelot fur-covered lapels and cuffs at the sleeves' ends. The fur travels from the lapels up to the shoulders, then down the dress' backside to the waist (pictured below). One magazine referred to this as a cape effect. (Side note: Seriously, ocelots are so cute that I can't even believe anyone would use them for their fur. Even though they're part of the leopard family, they're only slightly bigger than domesticated house cats.)


Next up is this lovely cream coat, made from twilled fabric. The coat is stitched in dark brown silk and fastened with three wood grained buttons in the same shade. The coat is worn over an underdress of brown crepe de chine, tied at the neck with a bow. Bags, gloves and shoes are in the same shade of brown, the suede shoes trimmed with corded silk. The hat is cream felt to match the coat with dark brown stitching for trimming (description is from the San Bernardino County Paper). Crepe de Chine is a light material, usually made from silk.


Maureen O'Sullivan played the main female lead in A Yank At Oxford. Rene Hubert created fourteen costumes for her to wear in the movie.

From the MGM publicity department: Here is Maureen in a neat, practical ensemble for the young undergraduette about Oxford. Skirt and coatee are in fine brown wool, with an attractive masculine feature in the brown check tweed waistcoat; imitation pockets are piped in brown wool and buttons are covered in brown wool. Shirt, collar, tie and cuffs are in an off-white pique, with shoes in brown suede.


Below, Maureen wears a two-piece outfit designed for her character, Molly, when she's off campus. The fitted, slender skirt features three inch slits on each side and is made from medium blue, wool cloque. Cloque is a woven material with a textured or quilted look, which came into popularity in the late 1930s.


The form-fitting jacket zips up in the front and is also made from wool cloque, with front and back panels of dark blue velvet. The jacket's pockets are trimmed in a medium blue, while the collar, tie and zipper covering are of pale blue pique.


I don't have any close-up pictures of Vivien and Maureen's shoes as they all come out too blurry when I enlarge them. I do have these two vintage ads for shoes from 1938, which I absolutely love since they're in color.


The shoes in the bottom right, with the eight open-holes, are similar to a pair that Vivien wears in the movie, minus the buckle straps. Other shoes from the movie feature ties and bows. If any of today's shoemakers were to produce a vintage line of shoes like these from 1938, I'd be first in line for them.


Thanks for joining me for today's Fashion Friday post!
~Michelle